Botero on the Avenue - Fernando Botero - Park Avenue, Manhattan, New York - Column

Temporarily sited along Park Avenue's median strip, 14 monumental and zincs by Fernando Botero bring a hint of Latin sensuality to fresh York's modernist canyons.

"Have you seen the fat tribe on Park?" my cab driver asked me single night as we were stuck in traffic. I didn't know at first that he meant the Botero statuarys but of course I had, for who could have missed them? During rush hour or after dinner, the 14 tins by Fernando Botero installed upon Park Avenue between 54th and 61st roads have been required viewing, like it or not, for anyone trying to realize around the East Side of Manhattan this autumn.

Sponsored by means of the Public Art Fund, the temporary installation of the and zincs [until Nov. 14] on the median malls of the avenue grew without of an original idea to exhibit a certain number of Boteros at the Doris C Freedman Plaza at Fifth Avenue and 60th road - since 1977 a site for revolving present to views of public sculpture. The throw out expanded after James M. Clark, executive director of the Public Art capital saw Botero's sculptures installed along the Champs-Elysdes in Paris in 1992 and envisioned doing something similar in of recent origin York, largely as a means of reintroducing figurative plastic art to the program; the last quasi-representational plastic art on the plaza was part of an outdoor Henry Moore display in 1984. According to Clark, "The challenge was to find a site where we could exhibit Botero's voluptuous figures in a series." In Europe they had been shown in 1991 in Florence at the Forte di Belvedere and in 1992 at the Casino in Monte Carlo (under the auspices of Marisa del Re who has also regularly included Botero in her statuary biennials in Monte Cario). generally there are plans to install the alloy of coppers in Chicago's Grant Park in April '94 and additional venue including San Diego, Sydney and Hong Kong are below consideration.

Born in 1932 the 61-year-old Botero is single of the world's most commercially felicitous living artists, with strong markets in Europe the U southerly America and the Far East. Better known as a painter, he has been making statuary since the '60s, when he lived in novel York. Early on, he emulated the traditional polychrome forest sculpture of his native Colombia in strange animals, similar as a horse (1966) sculpt without of acrylic resin and sawdust with a mane of real hair. He started worlking in alloy of copper only in 1975, when he could afford to change his Parisian atelier into a plastic art studio and have his plasters cast in metal. Now the plastic arts are made primarily in Pietrasanta in Tuscany, where Botero holds a house. He shuttles between of recent origin York, Paris, Pietrasanta and Bogota. His colossal pieces, inflated up by mechanical means from smaller prototypes have never been taken particularly seriously in the fresh York contemporary art world. on the other hand this current installation suggests that Botero should be understood as a latter-day Baroque showman who be subsequent toed in conquering the metropolis with his down-to-earth parade of mythically charged creatures-raucous bird, phallic cat, humans ranging from lovable village marks to stylized, over-muscled athletes and fecund-looking female nudes

Botero's shoot forward stirred up some trouble last summer when local committees in charge of planting flowers upon Park Avenue complained that they had not been adequately deliberateed about the feasibility of a plastic art exhibition on the plots where tulips and impatiens usually efflorescence A dustup ensued between Judith Price, president of Avenue magazine and of the Park Avenue Association, who was in favor of the Botero scheme, and Margaret Tiernes, head of the Park Avenue Malls Planting throw out which pays for flowers upon the central islands. Tiernes oppos the Botero upon the grounds that they could artificial position dangers to pedestrians and drivers alike. (Her organization is technically liable for any accident that offers on the median strips.) Eventually the statuary project was approved by the city's Department of Parks and Community Boards.

According to the Public Art capital the budget totaled around $100000 of which the stock contributed $20,000 in "direct costs" Acting in what Clark calls "enlightened self-interest," Marlborough Gallery (which is holding a coincident [to Nov. 6] exhibition of statuarys and drawings on canvas) lower extremityed the bill for transporting and rigging the outdoor works. These range in height from 8 to 15 feet weigh as a great quantity [i]or[/i] amount of as 5,000 pounds and were installed upon a single Saturday over the Labor Day weekend. single of the sculptures, Woman with snake (1993), now on view at the gallery, was destined for Park Avenue on the other hand had to be exchanged at the last minute when it prov too top-heavy for its made of wood base; it was replaced by dint of The Left Hand (1992) which, alone of the works upon Park Avenue, has a brutish sgraffito-like patina which recalls the painter's late-'50s canvases in which he emulated Abstract-Expressionist brushwork. The works upon Park Avenue range in date from 1976 to 1992 and were cast in editions of three Several of them, greatest in quantity notably female Torso (1982) and Cat (1984) have been seen before in novel York on Marlborough's outdoor statuary terrace during the 80 Although none of the statuarys on the avenue is ostensibly for sale, the prices for comparable works at the gallery move swiftly from $500,000 to $700,000.